Monday, March 18, 2013

What Members of Congress Do All Day and Night

The Congressional Management Foundation recently released a
thought-provoking report on Life
in Congress from the perspective of Members of Congress. This survey
of legislators may surprise many citizens, even those who are sure legislators
and staff sit around all day doing nothing but figuring out new ways to
irritate the American people. Highlights include:

·They spend the majority of their time in
D.C. on legislative policy work and constituent services: In fact,
these activities take up fifty-two percent of their time while in the capitol.
Campaigning, on the other hand, takes up 17%. If you don’t believe
that the substantive work is more important than campaigning, try calling your
legislator’s office, explaining you’re a constituent and asking for a few
minutes of a staff person’s time to discuss the policy issues you care
about. You’ll get that time, particularly if you’re polite. They may not
always agree with you, but they’ll listen.

·They spend an average of 40 weekends per
year in their districts: These are those infamous “recesses” or
“district work periods” that everyone thinks are vacations. They
aren’t. They are opportunities for constituents to connect with
legislators at town halls and through district meetings. There’s a
two week work period coming up the weeks of March 25th and April 1st.
You can make a difference by contacting legislative offices this week to ask
when they’ll be having a town hall or community meeting in the district.
Then take the time to go.

·The vast majority believe they are
performing a public service and are invested in their work: Why
would you stay in a job where hardly anyone likes you and it’s impossible to
get anything done despite the excessively long hours? For legislators
it’s because they believe in what they’re doing. In fact, they believe so
much that in many cases they are unable to give up principles they hold
dear. Take a minute to look up the bills they’ve introduced at www.congress.gov to learn a little more
about what they care about. You’ll be surprised.

I’m not naive enough to believe everyone will be convinced
by this study. Many citizens may agree with one commenter who asked:

“[a]m I supposed to be impressed? If I had an employee who
put in so many hours and accopmlished [sic] so little of value I would fire
tham [sic].”

Before you get on board with that sentiment, let’s try to be
fair. If I had a job where I had to get 270 people with vastly different
views to agree with me before I could get anything done, I’d leave. Yet
legislators stay because they believe that they are representing the views of
their constituents -- and with incumbent re-election rates consistently in the
90th percentile range, it appears that many are. Constituents
support their Congressperson because he or she reflects the values of the
district they represent. It’s all those other people who are the
problem. That’s the nature of representative democracy.

If we’re going to make our way out of the mire of our
current partisan political environment, perhaps the message from citizens
should be “let’s all unbend a little,” not “you’re all jerks who never
listen.” It can only help.